Robert Tomás Olmos enjoyed a long and distinguished career as a successful attorney but "never forgot where he came from" in California's fields, "always walked on the right side of justice" and "made the law work for poor people." He selflessly dedicated himself to defending and supporting farm workers. So it was with profound sadness that the farm worker movement learned of his sudden passing from natural causes on October 31 at age 74.
Born in the Fresno County farm town of Kingsburg in 1947 to a father who came to the U.S. as a field laborer, Tomás Olmos lived with his family out in the country in grower-owned housing. Tomás toiled in the fields growing up. After Reedley High School, where he was a star football and basketball player, Tomás was part of a group of Latinos who integrated public universities during the 1960s, graduating from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1969.
His first job after earning a degree at U.C. Berkeley law school in 1972 was helping farm workers and other poor residents facing employment discrimination and civil rights abuses out of the Delano office of the fledgling California Rural Legal Assistance (CRLA). “While in law school in the early '70s, we all said we would go back to our communities and fight for farm and other low-wage workers,” recalls Jose Padilla, CRLA's veteran executive director. “Tomás Olmos continued giving and giving and giving.”
Tomás joined another legal aid group, Western Center on Law and Poverty, in Los Angeles in 1976. Thereafter for the next 12 years, starting in 1979, he was a supervisory trial lawyer and then regional attorney in charge of litigation with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission covering Southern California and Nevada. Tomás won a landmark $45 million verdict against age and sex bias on behalf of Las Vegas casino workers in 1989.
From 1990 until 1995, he was executive director of the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, one of the nation's largest providers of legal services. Then he defended workers against employment abuses as a longtime partner with the prestigious L.A. law firm of Allred Maroko & Goldberg.
Outside the office, from 1984 until 2006 he was a volunteer dean, professor of constitutional law and evidence and board member at People's College of the Law. He spent nights and weekends teaching poor and minority students who couldn't attend traditional law schools. Among his students were Antonio Villaraigosa, who became state Assembly speaker and mayor of Los Angeles; Maria Elena Durazo, who is now a California state senator; retired Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Teresa Sanchez Gordon; and Los Angeles City Councilmember Gilbert Cedillo.
Tomás never stopped championing legal rights for farm workers and the poor. He reconnected with CRLA, serving on its board of directors, including board chair, in the 1980s. Beginning in 2001, Tomás and his wife, Dolores Leal, also an employment rights attorney with the Allred law firm, hosted fundraisers at their Los Feliz home benefitting CRLA and the United Farm Workers. These efforts for the two groups persisted until the pandemic hit in March.
"Tomás never forgot where he came from," Jose Padilla stated. "He was one of those who always walked on the right side of justice."
Cesar Chavez set up a legal apprenticeship program so farm workers and UFW staff could pass the bar exam and become attorneys without going to law school. At Cesar's request, Tomás and Dolores spent their Saturdays in the early 1990s driving up from Los Angeles to teach classes for apprentices on criminal law, contracts and torts at UFW headquarters at La Paz in the Tehachapi Mountain town of Keene. Tomás and Dolores worked with Marcos Camacho, a former union paralegal and apprenticeship program graduate who served for years as UFW general counsel.
Tomás and Marcos collaborated on a major class action lawsuit against giant Kovacevich Five Farms for refusing to hire women in any of its Delano table grape operations. The suit was settled for $1.68 million in 2008. Marcos became Judge Marcos Camacho in 2014, when Governor Jerry Brown appointed him to the Kern County Superior Court.
"Tomás made the law work for poor people, especially farm workers," observed UFW President Emeritus Arturo S. Rodriguez. Along with his wife, Sonia Rodriguez, Arturo developed a close friendship with Tomás and Dolores. Tomás "never abandoned his roots in the fields," Arturo added.
He was "fiercely loyal to the causes to which he committed himself and also to his family," remembers Tomás' son, Jaime Olmos. "He was an activist his entire life, a commitment he shared with his children."
Tomás Olmos is survived by siblings Fidel, Dolores, Frank, Edward and Mary; Dolores Leal, his wife of 24 years; children Xochitl Jackson and Jaime and Joaquin Olmos; and grandchildren Atticus Cruz Jackson and Adelina Paz Jackson.
A viewing service will be held on Monday, November 9, at 10 a.m. at the Church of the Recessional in Forrest Lawn Cemetery, 1712 South Glendale Avenue, Glendale 91205. A funeral mass will be conducted on Tuesday, November 10, at 2 p.m. at Our Mother of Good Counsel Church, 2060 North Vermont Avenue, Los Angeles 90027.
Donations to the UFW in memory of Tomás Olmos can be made by going to: ufw.org/tomasolmos
Posing for a photo were (from left) of Arturo Rodriguez, Tomás Olmos, Dolores Huerta and Dolores Leal.